Bill Barnes Air Adventurer, July 1935 — page 106: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

104 noise, felt a terrific, jarring jerk, and was snapped into an upright position under a peacefully still, white canopy of silk that supported him and was low- ering him gently to the earth. THERE IT WAS —the earth that had been above and below and all around him. It was safely under his feet now and quite near. Nearer than it had ever come to him before. He had made longer delays but never any that had taken him quite so low. As soon as he looked down he could distingiush the hands and faces— almost the expressions—of the crowds of people looking up at him. He recog- nized familiar figures on the field by their clothing. He heard voices from the ground, too—motors puttering, auto horns blowing, voices shouting, the elec- tric voice of the loud-speaker system, and even the shrill note of a peanut vender’s whistle. He was directly over the crowded grand stand. The ’chute was still oscil- lating and floating swiftly downward. They were still in his way, although he was not traveling very fast now. He reached up, grasped all the shroud lines on one side, and pulled down hard on them with one hand. Then he reached up with his other hand, grabbed another fistful of the same shroud lines, and drew it down almost to his hip. All of which spilled air from the opposite side of the ’chute and caused it to sideslip steeply away from the crowd toward the field. This made his descent much too rapid for the little altitude he had but he did not let go the lines and have the ’chute assume its normal position until they were well within the field and near the ground. He did not want to land on their heads even now. Before, he had wanted to bury himself in the ground in front of them or go crashing through a hangar behind them, but not to kill or maim any of them. Very near. BILL BARNES It was almost a perfect jump. He landed in front of and some thirty yards to the left of the end of the grand stand where the announcer’s booth stood, a little over a minute after he had left» the wing. As usual he landed on his feet. It was not necessary to send a car out onto the field to pick him up and bring him in. He was not far enough away for that. A group of pilots and field attendants ran to his assistance, helping him to unbuckle the parachutes and gather the opened one up in or- derly fashion. They chanted praises as they clustered about and fussed over him. Gruffly he thanked them, picked up the huge bundle of silk, and walked directly toward the operations office. There was the usual honking of horns, whistling, cheering, and hand clapping, only this time it was louder and more vociferous than he ever had heard it before. He completely ignored it, however. He did not want any ap- plause that day. All he wanted was to get away by himself. The little group about him tried to crowd him over to the grand stand. He had to push some of them away forcibly to make his way toward where he wanted to go. He was angrily con- scious of the all-powerful, megaphoned voice of the field announcer, a voluble combination of sight-seeing lecturer and master of ceremonies, begging the slowly dispersing crowd to wait a few minutes while he tried to get Mr. Har- per to take a bow and say a few words to them about the thrilling jump he had just made. “That was some long delay you made, Freddie, old boy,” he said, speaking di- rectly to Harper by way of the loud speaker. “Come on over and tell the audience all about it. I promised them a thousand-foot free fall and you gave them a two-thousand or was it a three- thousand-foot delay. How high were oO COmiclbook (©